Steak to perfection satisfies your palate

Steak, by a wide margin, is easily the most ordered item in the world of kosher restaurants. It’s for good reason that steak holds such a position; after all there is just something about eating a steak that is so visceral and satisfying that the allure of ordering a thick cut of beef at a good restaurant is simply too much to pass up. But what makes steak really wonderful is the simplicity of it, the sheer elegance of how easily it can be prepared. With just a little attention and a bit of know how, a home chef can cook a steak in their own kitchen that would be on par with the finest steakhouse in New York but at a fraction of the cost. So bear with me for several paragraphs and I will tell you how you can make the greatest steak you have ever eaten with very little effort.

Now, if pressed, I would have to say that the absolutely best way to cook a steak is by Sous-vide (pronounced Sou-Vee), a very old cooking method invented in 1799 by the German Count Benjamin Thompson. The method of Sous-vide is to seal food in an air tight container and then immerse it in water kept at a regulated temperature. This method went mostly unused until the mid-1960s when French chefs discovered that cooking Foie Gras using the Sous-vide method resulted in perfectly even cooking without loss of mass. This is because once the food is sealed in an airtight package, say a vacuum seal bag; it will cook without losing any of its moisture. Also, since water is an excellent conductor of heat it is able to provide a more consistent and even method of cooking. When you apply the method of Sous-vide to steak you get poetry in beef. You simply flash sear the outside of the steak, throw it in a vacuum bag with some rosemary and some salt and let your thermal immersion circulator do the rest.

What’s that? You don’t have a thermal immersion circulator? Well of course you don’t. No one does. They cost thousands of dollars and take up quite a bit of counter space. Even most kosher restaurants don’t have immersion circulators because of how marvelously expensive they are. So the question becomes how can you use the principles of the Sous-vide method without breaking your bank to cook a steak?

The answer to this question came to me several weeks ago while I was speaking with a chef friend of mine who suggested that I par freeze my steak before cooking. Let me explain. With Sous-vide, the key is to create even cooking without any loss of liquid. That same outcome can be achieved with a bit of a cheat. Just wrap your steak in plastic and freeze it for about an hour before you cook it. When you are ready to cook, remove your steak from the freezer and set your oven to about 200 degrees. Put your best sauté pan on the stove and turn on your burner to high. Salt and pepper your steak to taste and once your pan is screaming hot add enough safflower oil (or equally low smoke point oil) to coat the pan’s surface. Sear the steak on each side for about two minutes or until the steak develops a nice golden crust. Searing the steak locks in all of the juice but would normally begin to cook the interior of the meat; however since in this case the steak is par-frozen the interior won’t actually cook. Once it’s seared put the steak on a cooking sheet and place in the oven for forty-five minutes or a full hour if you like your meat well done. When you take the steak out of the oven, allow it to rest for five minutes to ensure that none of the juice is lost when you cut into it.

The result of this method is a perfectly cooked steak that can rival any major New York restaurant. I have tried this with inch thick rib steaks and get an amazing result but I am by far the most impressed by how well a thick London broil reacts to this method of cooking. So the next time you are having guests, making Shabbat or just feeling carnivorous give this method a try and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Zechariah Mehler is a widely published food writer and expert in social marketing. Follow him on Twitter @thekoshercritic